People

Allenspach, K., Bell, J. and Whittlestone, K. (2008) Interactive clinical cases in veterinary education used to promote independent study. Journal of Veterinary Medical Education 35(4), 589-594.

Cox, B., Macharia, R., Short, N., Whittlestone, K.D., 2008. Exploiting existing teaching and learning resources through podcasts. In: Salmon, G., Edirisingha, P. (Eds.), Podcasting for Learning in Universities. Open University Press Order from Amazon or the Book Depository

Wheeler, D.W., Degnan, B.A., Murray, L.J., Dunling, C.P., Whittlestone, K.D., Wood, D.F., Smith, H.L., Gupta, A.K., 2008. Retention of drug administration skills after intensive teaching. Anaesthesia 63, 379-384.

Whittlestone, K.D., Bullock, J., Pirkelbauer, B., May, S., 2008. The significant factors affecting engagement of veterinary students with mobile learning. In: IADIS international conference on mobile learning, Algarve, Portugal, pp. 135-139.

Whittlestone, K. D., Allenspach, K., & Bell, J. (2007). Evaluation of a web-based interactive teaching tool for clinical cases in veterinary undergraduate education. KILT Annual Conference Proceedings, Kings College London.

Degnan, B. A., Murray, L. J., Dunling, C. P., Whittlestone, K. D., Standley, T. D., Gupta, A. K., et al. (2006). The effect of additional teaching on medical students' drug administration skills in a simulated emergency scenario. Anaesthesia, 61(12), 1155-1160.

Wheeler, D. W., Whittlestone, K. D., Johnston, A. J., & Smith, H. L. (2006). Problems encountered with a pilot online attendance record and feedback scheme for medical students. Educ Health (Abingdon), 19(3), 369-374

Wheeler, D. W., Whittlestone, K. D., Salvador, R., Wood, D. F., Johnston, A. J., Smith, H. L., et al. (2006). Influence of improved teaching on medical students' acquisition and retention of drug administration skills. Br J Anaesth, 96(1), 48-52.

Wheeler, D. W., Remoundos, D. D., Whittlestone, K. D., House, T. P., & Menon, D. K. (2004). Calculation of doses of drugs in solution: are medical students confused by different means of expressing drug concentrations? Drug Safety, 27(10), 729-734.

Wheeler, D. W., Remoundos, D. D., Whittlestone, K. D., Palmer, M. I., Wheeler, S. J., Ringrose, T. R., et al. (2004). Doctors' confusion over ratios and percentages in drug solutions: the case for standard labelling. J R Soc Med, 97(8), 380-383.

Wheeler, D. W., Whittlestone, K. D., Smith, H. L., Gupta, A. K., & Menon, D. K. (2003). A web-based system for teaching, assessment and examination of the undergraduate peri-operative medicine curriculum. Anaesthesia, 58(11), 1079-1086.

Ercole, A., Whittlestone, K. D., Melvin, D. G., & Rashbass, J. (2002). Collusion detection in multiple choice examinations. Medical Education, 36(2), 166-172.

Whittlestone, K. D. (2008) Formative assessment: Any time, any place, anywhere. JISC formative e-assessment practical enquiry day, Institute of Education, Work-Based Learning CeTL, 3rd July 2008.

Aldridge, B. & Whittlestone, K. D. (2008) Two-day workshop, presented at the Development of South Asia-specific Integrated Veterinary Undergraduate Curriculum, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 27-28 Feburary 2008.

Whittlestone, K. D. (2007) Mobile learning and web 2.0, paper presented at the Teaching innovations workshop, Dublin Vet School, 14th November 2007.
Baillie, S. & Whittlestone, K. D. (2007) Haptic simulators in veterinary education, paper presented at the Teaching innovations workshop, Dublin Vet School, 14th November 2007.

Whittlestone, K. D. (2007) Remote medicine and ubiquitous learning: Looking over the horizon, paper presented at the Royal Army Veterinary Corp: CPD day, Melton Mowbray, 24th October 2007.

Whittlestone, K. D., Bullock, J., Jones, L., Mugford, A. & Nunn, P. (2007) Developing a student-centred clinical activity tool: The bee's kness or a dog's dinner?, poster presented at AMEE, Trondheim, Norway, 26th August 2007.

Whittlestone, K. D., Allenspach, K., & Bell, J. (2007). Evaluation of a web-based interactive teaching tool for clinical cases in veterinary undergraduate education. KILT Annual Conference, Kings College London, 4th July 2007.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/learningteaching/conference/panel.html

Whittlestone, K. D., Macharia, R., Short, N., & Cox, B. (2007). Potcasting in Veterinary Anatomy. Slice of Life, Salt Lake City, Utah, 29th June 2007.

http://slice.utah.edu/2007/ http://library.med.utah.edu/ram/slice/kim_whittlestone.ram

Whittlestone, K. D. (2006). Lifelong and independent veterinary education. GVS University Veterinary Schools Liaison Group, Bristol Veterinary School, 23rd November 2006.

Whittlestone, K. D., Phillips, G., & Rashbass, J. (2006). Building the perfect Medic or Veterinarian: From Directed Learning to Independent Learners? . Slice of Life, Lausanne, Switzerland, 6th July 2006.

https://www2.unil.ch/sol2006/ rtsp://unistream.unil.ch/cemcav/sol/03_Whittlestone_SOL.mov

The student experience

Between 1997 and 2006, while working in the Clinical and Biomedical Computing Unit at the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, we undertook a series of inter-related projects all delivered via the 'Educational Resources Web'- ERWeb for short - which I developed in its first incarnation to allow us to develop online activities and monitor students usage. Many of these projects involved examining how students approached their studies (for example online cases where students could view each others answers and rate them) and what influenced their approaches (for example who's recommendations about online resources did they pay most attention to? Answer: their colleagues). I guess these were the early days of social networking and we didn't realise how big this area was going to become.

A fascinating project that was illuminating in relation to the 'student experience' was the video diary project we ran with four 4th year clinical students. We gave a video camera to each student and asked them to record their experiences each day and send us their tapes at the end of each week. The project ran for 3 months and the diaries taught us a huge amount about what it's like being a medical student as well as providing an opportunity for the students to reflect on their progression through the course.

A year later, we were approached by two 4th Year Graduate Course students who wanted to undertake a similar project. We helped them to devise a study following six of their fellow students in the lead up to their final pathology examinations. They ran the project themselves with only a little support from us, and produced a 30 minute DVD, called "Life Path", highlighting the highs and lows of their journey. For me, the fascinating finding was how these graduate students dealt with the information overload they were facing - while some had coping strategies at the beginning of the project, they all ended up just trying to get through as much material as they could, and hoping that enough of it would 'stick'. The project also highlighted how big an impact the social side of life has on anyone's ability to learn. If we could have predicted how big video would be in the future we could have set up YouTube and would be millionaires.

LIVE

Joining LIVE was a natural progression for me, and a good move into the realms of researching veterinary education with an eye on appropriate technologies as apposed to trying to influence education from a technology agenda. It was also strange in that I was returning 17 years after qualifying from this institution but on "the other side". Understanding the workings of an institution (especially from a different perspective) is useful, and in my case a necessary part of working out how best to integrate my research into LIVE and the RVC, but I am still surprised at how long this takes.

My experience at Cambridge had kept me up to speed with the medical student perspective and I was keen to find out whether the RVC students were struggling with the same issues.

One of the first areas of research I undertook, therefore, was to baseline current student attitudes and approaches to their study. Fortunately, Noel Entwistle's groups ASSIST questionnaire had already been produced as an optically marked form and distributed to all five BVetMed year groups - all I had to do was get the forms scanned and then analyze the data. After an initial analysis and graphing of student responses across all year groups, the data suggested that a significant proportion of students across all five years were adopting surface and strategic approaches to their studies. As the data collection was a snapshot, we are now collecting longitudinal data with student identifiers (the initial data collection was done anonymously) and will be publishing the results of this further analysis.

Alongside this work, and of course led by a need to understand more about surface, strategic and deep approaches to study, I started to further explore the educational literature - expanding from Entwistle, Newble, McCune, Prosser and Trigwell (approaches, inventories, styles), to Gerald Grow (teaching learners to be self-directed), John Biggs (what the student does), and Erik De Corte (powerful learning environments).

At the same time, two unrelated projects became entangled by a thread of commonality - the 'Pedagogy Planner' project (with Diana Laurillard at the London Knowledge Lab, IOE) and research into small-group case-based learning (known at the RVC as 'Directed Learning' or 'e-Directed Learning' if it involves technology) - the thread was the kind of support staff need to both research and develop their own teaching.

As part of t he Pedagogy planner project we are helping to research and develop an online support tool for staff planning to use technology in their courses.

Alongside this, I started to work with Karin Allenspach (a veterinary alimentary clinician) to explore her use of e-Directed Learning to develop third year veterinary students' clinical reasoning capabilities. We have written this work up (see Publications and presentations) but one of the outcomes for me was that exploring an existing practice in depth and extracting the principals of what worked well has been successful for all involved (a working title could be 'We know it works in practice, but does it work in theory?' - thanks to David Flanders at Birkbeck for coming up with that back-to-front phrase!).

Other projects that I am involved with at LIVE include the myPad mobile learning project, the wikiVet/wikiPath project (a cross-veterinary school collaborative constructivist approach to pathology teaching and sharing veterinary resources supported by the HEA/JISC), IMPALA - a research project led by the University of Leicester investigating podcasting approaches to education, collaborative work with the eMedia unit at the RVC, the JISC Emerge Project - a community of practice exploring communities of practice going for funding from JISC and various embryonic collaborative links with folk at other CETLs, Vet Schools, Medical Schools and the Government Veterinary Service.

My infrequently updated blog is also available (it may be a little slow from the uk as it is hosted in Australia).

£1.13m collaboration lead by the IOE/LKL "A Learning Design Support Environment (LDSE) for Teachers and Lecturers" plus a PhD studentship on the "Hidden Curriculum" ESRC/TLRP September 2008 - August 2011

£199,500 collabroation lead by the RVC "Appropriate and Practical Technologies (APT) for Students, Teachers, Administrators and Researchers" (STAIRS). JISC February 2008 - April 2009

£20,000 plus £2,000 collaboration between Vet schools "WikiVet and WikiPath" HEA community of practice and JISC. 2007 - 2008

£10,000 internal award "The development and implementation of effective multisource feedback in the evaluation of Senior Clinical Training Scholars" James Bee Educator award August 2007 - July 2009